'Cold-blooded' ice cream lady admits murders

A woman dubbed the "Ice Killer" by the Austrian media has confessed in court to murdering two men and setting their sawn-up body parts in cement in the cellar of her ice cream parlour.

At times breaking into tears, Goidsargi Estibaliz Carranza Zabala, who has joint Spanish-Mexican citizenship, told the hearing in Vienna on Monday how she shot and sliced up with a chain saw her ex-husband in 2008 and then in 2010 her new partner.

"I never thought I would be able to go through with it" ... Goidsargi Estibaliz Carranza Zabala. Photo: AFP

At first freezing the body parts in the apartment that also served as a store room for the ice cream parlour, she concealed them in chunks of concrete that she mixed up in the cellar of her "Schleckeria" shop in the Austrian capital.

The grisly remains were discovered by chance during maintenance work in June 2011. After going on the run to Italy, Carranza was captured several days afterwards and later extradited.

Carranza shot ex-husband Holger Holz - who she said was violent, lazy and a bully who refused to move out after their divorce - at close range with a .22-calibre Beretta pistol three times in the head as he worked on his computer.

"I never thought I would be able to go through with it," Carranza, wearing a grey dress and glasses, told the packed courtroom. "It was 3pm. There were children outside, it was nice weather, someone must have heard.

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"I thought the police would come. Then my mobile phone rang. It was the ice cream parlour, saying they needed me to come over."

After several failed attempts to dispose of the corpse, including the "crazy idea" of setting fire to it, Carranza finally decided to resort to a chain saw.

"I cleaned and cleaned in the days afterwards," she told the court.

But her new relationship with Manfred Hinterberger, an ice cream salesman some 20 years her senior, quickly deteriorated until she felt "like in a prison ... like my head was in a plastic bag".

Before killing him she took shooting lessons as well as a course in mixing concrete at a local hardware store. She shot him as he slept after a drunken argument in November 2010 with the same Beretta.

"He turned his face to the wall and started snoring ... I was so angry. I had the gun under the mattress. I took it out, loaded and shot," Carranza told the court.

He turned his face to the wall and started snoring ... I was so angry. I had the gun under the mattress. I took it out, loaded and shot.

In the morning she "asked him to forgive me for what I had done". She then proceeded to dispose of the body.

When arrested, Carranza was two months pregnant by another man, whom she married in prison in March this year. The baby was born in January but the boy, called Roland after the father, was immediately taken away from her and is now reportedly being looked after by her parents in Barcelona.

"He is totally different. He is very gentle, the opposite of macho," Carranza said of her new husband. "He would not bring me into such a situation."

"This woman has two faces," prosecutor Petra Freh told the packed courtroom on Monday. "She will try to play here the part of someone well-behaved, who would never do something like this.

"My task is to show you her other side ... That she is a singularly cold-blooded and unscrupulous killer," Freh said. "Do not be fooled."

A psychiatric report commissioned by the court said that Carranza, now in a unit for the "mentally abnormal", was dangerous and was like a "princess ... who just wants to be 'rescued' by a man".

The trial was scheduled to last several days, with around 50 witnesses and seven experts due to testify.